So while it remains puzzling why jellyrolls show up in so many non-enveloped viruses, playing the "my fold is more curious/novel/interesting than your fold" game is silly.
Crowdsourcing is gaining traction in life sciences, from FoldIt's online protein folding games to Transparency Life Sciences' crowdsourced clinical study design.
A good way to prime students to think about the rules, conditions, and constraints for self-assembly is to play the protein-folding "game" Fold-it.
The benefit is two-fold, game designers say.
Baker enlisted Zoran Popović, a game designer at the University of Washington, to create the protein-folding game.
Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, agrees that humans bring problem-solving skills to the protein-folding game that computers can't match.
F. Khatib, F. DiMaio, Foldit Contenders Group, Foldit Void Crushers Group, S. Cooper, M. Kazmierczyk, M. Gilski, S. Krzywda, H. Zabranska, I. Pichova, J. Thompson, Z. Popovi´c, M. Jaskolski and D. Baker, "Crystal Structure of a Monomeric Retroviral Protease Solved by Protein Folding Game Players," Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 18 (2011): 1175-1177.
Editor balks at authors using screen names from RNA folding game.
A similar example would be Fold.it - an online protein-folding game that lets you fold digital proteins.
"Following the failure of a wide range of attempts to solve the crystal structure of M-PMV retroviral protease by molecular replacement, we challenged players of the protein folding game Foldit to produce accurate models of the protein", the University of Washington research team said in its findings.
